Tag Archives: 20

United States Attorney Josh Minkler, in a statement to the press published on the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Indiana, announced that Adrian Grisanti, 46, was convicted on 20 counts of various child pornography charges and one count of destruction of evidence. U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt announced the verdict after a four-day trial in New ... Read More »

A 30-year-old Maryland man will spend nearly 20 years behind bars for distributing child abuse content through the darknet and other file sharing programs. After release, the man will spend the remainder of his life on supervised release. In early 2017, Silver Spring resident Kevin Heiting pleaded guilty to sharing more than 100,000 child abuse photos on the darknet. DeepDotWeb, ... Read More »

A 30-year-old Silver Spring man, Kevin Heiting was arrested after he solicited explicit child pornographic photos. Heiting confessed and admitted to the photography, collecting and distributing of the child videos and images in hopes of giving a plea that would lead to his release. However, judge Paula Xinis sentenced him to 20 years imprisonment with an extended lifetime supervision after ... Read More »

The Romanian National Police, the Italian National Police and Europol, all teamed up to hunt cyber criminals across Europe. Following years of investigation and raids, 20 cyber criminals were arrested for being in connection with a €1 million fraud. The joint investigation resulted in the arrest of the Carbanak gang leader. The Carbanak gang was arrested days before the Romanian ... Read More »

In 2006, one square meter of housing in Russia cost $600 and now – $840. A kilogram of beef rose in price from $2 to $5, a bottle of vodka – from $2.8 to $9, a ticket to a theatre went up by 226%. The price of clothes, food, public services has increased and the cost of only one consumer ... Read More »

OpenBazaar recently launched the beta version of OpenBazaar 2.0, finally allowing people to anonymously buy and sell products with cryptocurrency. In January of this year a Developer Release of version 2.0 of the OpenBazaar software was released, followed by the alpha version. The previous releases of OpenBazaar 2.0 used a testnet, but now with the beta version of the ... Read More »

This week’s summary of various cryptocurrency news and developments: New developments: Rogue Silk Road agent admits he stole another 1,600 BTC after guilty plea Shaun Bridges, a rogue Secret Service agent who plead guilty to obstruction of justice and money laundering while investigating Silk Road, after stealing over $800,000 worth of Bitcoin, recently plead guilty to stealing another 1,600 BTC ... Read More »

This week’s summary of various cryptocurrency news and developments: New developments: WannaCry ransomware campaign netted hackers nearly $100,000 in bitcoin A massive global ransomware campaign using a strain known as WannaCry, carried out by an unknown author, recently hit organizations in nearly 100 countries using an NSA exploit and demanded a bitcoin ransom in return for the victims’ files back. ... Read More »

On March 13, acting U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge announced that Chief U.S. District Judge Robert J. Jonker sentenced a Michigan man to prison for conspiracy to distribute controlled substances. Michael Carlton Paiva, the defendant, bought significant quantities of drugs from vendors on the Silk Road 2.0. The feds watched him until 2017 when they gathered enough evidence to send Paiva ... Read More »

Michael Carlton Paiva, a 30-year-old man from Norton Shores, was sentenced to prison for ordering various substances from the dark net and reselling them to his customers locally. The suspect was arrested as part of an international law enforcement operation. Operation Onymous, a joint police action between the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Europol, and local authorities, resulted in the bust ... Read More »

Tax scams are on the rise again as the tax season is approaching. Hackers and scammers are using sophisticated tools and complex software to steal sensitive financial and personal information to file fraudulent tax returns. There exists two main phases in a tax scam: acquisition of necessary financial and personal information and utilizing data sets to request for tax refunds. ... Read More »

A researcher known as @Deku_shrub, after he found a Reddit post mentioning an oddity, verified that an entity hacked Freedom Hosting II, one of the largest hosting platforms for hidden services. In 2013, the FBI indicted the creator and owner of the original Freedom Hosting, Eric Eoin Marques for hosting child pornography. Marques, a 31-year-old man from Dublin, fought against ... Read More »

Michael Fluckiger, known as “Administrator 2” in the administration of the child pornography site PlayPen, pleaded guilty to his crimes in December 2015. In early January, a judge sentenced the man to 20 years in prison for engaging in a child exploitation enterprise. The Indiana man, after being arrested in April 2015, pleaded not guilty to sexual exploitation and other ... Read More »

In August of 2016, DeepDotWeb reported the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the European Parliament member Nigel Farage’s aide’s arrest in the midst of boarding a flight to Britain. During that time, former UKIP aide George Cottrell was charged with 21 offences, including money laundering and blackmail. This week, Cottrell plead guilty to wire fraud, settling an agreement with the ... Read More »

Over the past few years, bitcoin solidated its title as “the global currency” by outperforming reserve currencies and assets worldwide. The rising value of bitcoin and its decentralized nature have led high profile investors and traders to consider bitcoin as a safe asset. Upon the election of Donald Trump, the price of bitcoin immediately surged amid global market instability. Australian ... Read More »